Stepping Lightly: Venice - Should Anyone Bother to GO?

Venice: Unquestionably the most travelled to city in the world. But an annoying and cumbersome city to visit which paradoxically gives it its charm and separates it from just about any other city on earth. Stuffed to the gill with tourists (most of whom are sadly American), flooded with ever-present, rising sea waters fueled by increasing water levels and relentless bursts of weekly rainfall – water levels go up, water levels go down, handcuffed by local, federal and international freebooters (merchants, local government, official and unofficial vendors, etc) overregulating, overcharging and overtaxing at every opportunity, access across town blocked by a labyrinth of waterways and canals and harrowingly narrow passageways - many of which are linked by step-up to step-down bridges, Venice is home to many unique, intriguing, beautiful, but nevertheless poorly maintained and deteriorating landscapes and architecture, representing some of the most important historical and religious landmarks in the world. From a historical point of view, while Venice is currently acknowledged as one of several renowned cities in Italy, in ancient times it was the center of the universe.

I wanted to answer the question – given the many physical, financial and logistical roadblocks imposed on visitors to Venice, is it worth even going to Venice? Indeed, you can easily find dozens of travel guides with beautiful illustrations that you could read and enjoy and many more You Tube videos detailing the adventures of travelers across the world who are, for some reason, compelled to spend their time creating videos of their experiences rather than savoring them as immediate and personal.

This is not a TripAdvisor like reference to the 5 or 10 must see sites in Venice, except to say that tooling around St Mark’s Square is a walk in history while reminding me of the Netflix series – The Borgias. Indeed, there were probably as many secret passages and private rooms in the Doge Palace as waterways in Venice. The perspective taken here is a more personal account of how it felt to be a tourist in Venice.

Our tourist days were limited by rain, and water drenched streets some of which were flooded up to your knees – with water that was incontrovertibly contaminated murky sludge - having to step up and down Venice’s vast concrete and stone infrastructure on a daily basis. Imagine what a hostile path that a molecule of water has - as it is squeezed through the supporting city concrete infrastructure - above the Venice “ground” as it does about one in every three days during rainy season by rising water levels - and then gravity takes over pushing it into retreat back down – all in a matter of hours on the same day. It’s hard to believe that restaurants can serve uncontaminated food to visitors and locals when cleanliness cannot be guaranteed or controlled. Indeed, the foot path of the horde of locals and tourists pushing the wet street sludge into every store, restaurant and historic site inevitably insures a ubiquitous community wide blanket contamination - throughout the Venice cosmos. For tourists to survive the unpredictable rising water cycles without contaminating your feet and lower legs, they are compelled to purchase plastic, disposable boots for 10-20 euros - that can more or less effectively block water from gaining access to your feet and legs and ostensibly preventing any hostile critters form invading your epidermis. That is until the boots begin to leak through a hole in the poorly constructed disposable boot, which occurs more often than one would wish for.

With so many tourists visiting the splendidly beautiful historical sites in Venice, overcharged at every opportunity, it’s surprising how run-down, deteriorating, and poorly maintained many of the Venice landmark buildings are. Is there no historic preservation society effort to restore these deteriorating structures? Is there no master plan? Who will want to visit Venice in 10, 20, 30 years. But maybe Venice’s charm is to witness the raw natural deteriorating beauty of the complex labyrinth of waterways and water drenched architecture. Perhaps coating surfaces with artificial facades and glistening paint would only provide an unrealistic cover, a plastic looking embellishment that is better suited to Las Vegas than to Venice. But it was still painful to witness so many dilapidated, cracking, rotting architecture in the disorganized hodgepodge of the Venice skyline. Without consulting your travel guide, you just knew that each and every building represented centuries of important history that housed the lives of many important charters of the world of business, art and music.

Venice is still home to artists and artisans from around the world. In fact, there were still many small shops that we passed where painters and artisans were working while displaying their art for purchase. Even a picture frame making shop we visited was run by an artist who truly built each frame by hand to your liking at a reasonable price that Americans would find tolerable - in contrast to the shockingly expensive LEGOLAND fit the pieces together frame making techniques that are utilized in the Americas we have been accustomed to accept.

Restaurants are abundant, quaint, and charming despite the ever-present liquid street sludge carpeting every inch of floor in Venice. And the food was really good, even if the service was tired, inattentive and detached, ostensibly due to decades of serving weary and demanding tourists, particularly from the US – but China is following closely behind. Even the pizza, admittedly an Italian creation, was the tastiest pizza I have eaten in years! To my amazement, I never thought any pizza could top New York pizza.

I go back to my original question – is Venice worth the effort. There are many attractions but the three that stand out the most are the St Mark’s Basilica, the Doge Palace, and the Rialto Bridge. What might not be an obvious answer given the whiny personal dialogue of this ungrateful blog, - is a resounding yes. Like marriage, everyone should be forced to experience Venice at least (preferably) once! Its like no other city – it will provide memories of a life time - go there before it’s too late!